ALL THAT BRAVERY GOT US NOWHERE
This unnatural hour that I have slept in still
hungry from an unfinished early meal, you appear
with your full body and voice and ask me to write again. I
am sitting in a car, running late for my piano lesson, and you
are leaning at the door, telling me the trees have stopped
growing where you live. That you've walked across
two continents but the moon still refuses to leave you.
**
I hear you've started praying now—cut your hair
and stopped wearing blue. They say you suffered
for my art, for desire and despair. I suffered
for my quietude, for I thought freedom
meant something grander. Thankfully, our inequities
were even: clear and simple, the way horses grieve.
After a while, it became harder to realize I was
not talking to my refrigerator. I was, in fact, suffering.
**
In the dream, we are now climbing a staircase.
I am walking behind you, watching your milky calves
stroll in and out of your summer skirt. "What do you understand
of love?" you ask. "Nothing," I say. "And loss?" "Nothing."
"Then why do you write about either?"
"I don't."
**
"I write about you." You pause for a moment,
but do not turn back. Outside the window,
birds are turning into stone. Around the world, everyone
is entering a conversation.
LETTERS FROM EXILE – IV
I woke up at 2 a.m. with a start.
It was raining outside—birds
were angry, the streets full
of fire-engines —and I thought of you
after years: where are you now,
and how are you living, so far away,
with your black and white t.v.
by the window that opens
up to tea stalls, your single-bed
in a square apartment, walls
calendared with gods and goddesses
all the way back to nineteen
ninety-six. Tell me, my beautiful
loss, my hyacinth, how are you living
in the valleys of Dehra,
in that house you have made
with a young man you love.
Hemant Mohapatra was born and raised in India and spent much of his childhood surrounded by the Himalayan and Shivalik ranges. He works as an engineer during the day and moonlights as a writer during the night. Hemant is the recipient of the 2nd Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize (2010) and the Harper Collins Poetry Prize (2008).
This unnatural hour that I have slept in still
hungry from an unfinished early meal, you appear
with your full body and voice and ask me to write again. I
am sitting in a car, running late for my piano lesson, and you
are leaning at the door, telling me the trees have stopped
growing where you live. That you've walked across
two continents but the moon still refuses to leave you.
**
I hear you've started praying now—cut your hair
and stopped wearing blue. They say you suffered
for my art, for desire and despair. I suffered
for my quietude, for I thought freedom
meant something grander. Thankfully, our inequities
were even: clear and simple, the way horses grieve.
After a while, it became harder to realize I was
not talking to my refrigerator. I was, in fact, suffering.
**
In the dream, we are now climbing a staircase.
I am walking behind you, watching your milky calves
stroll in and out of your summer skirt. "What do you understand
of love?" you ask. "Nothing," I say. "And loss?" "Nothing."
"Then why do you write about either?"
"I don't."
**
"I write about you." You pause for a moment,
but do not turn back. Outside the window,
birds are turning into stone. Around the world, everyone
is entering a conversation.
LETTERS FROM EXILE – IV
I woke up at 2 a.m. with a start.
It was raining outside—birds
were angry, the streets full
of fire-engines —and I thought of you
after years: where are you now,
and how are you living, so far away,
with your black and white t.v.
by the window that opens
up to tea stalls, your single-bed
in a square apartment, walls
calendared with gods and goddesses
all the way back to nineteen
ninety-six. Tell me, my beautiful
loss, my hyacinth, how are you living
in the valleys of Dehra,
in that house you have made
with a young man you love.
Hemant Mohapatra was born and raised in India and spent much of his childhood surrounded by the Himalayan and Shivalik ranges. He works as an engineer during the day and moonlights as a writer during the night. Hemant is the recipient of the 2nd Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize (2010) and the Harper Collins Poetry Prize (2008).
